Secret admirers: Frogs and rosbifs

The relationship between Britain and France, in business as in so many other things, seems always to have been built on incomprehension, or at least on very different points de vue. The two former great colonial powers are said to have built their empires on very different institutional models, for example: trading posts or comptoirs de commerce for the British Empire, schools and cultural centres for the French. In other words the Frogs did it for la gloire, while the British just ventured abroad to make money.

Yet ever since the Industrial Revolution, these two ancient enemies have been co-operating widely with each other in trade, transfer of technology, business investment and, more recently, in the exchange of large numbers of managers and young workers. But can we ever really understand each other?

Well, recent history is full of examples of successful co-operation between the Frogs and the rosbifs, the most famous of all being Concorde. Despite different approaches to supersonic technology, despite linguistic and cultural barriers, this was an Anglo– French co-operation that resulted in a breakthrough unmatched by anything since. Indeed, the biggest disagreement that occurred during the project was over the spelling of ‘Concorde’, and even that was eventually resolved by an enlightened British minister of transport. More recently, we have seen the completion of the Channel Tunnel — for all its financial problems, a magnificent feat of engineering — and the Norman Foster-designed Millau viaduct, as well as countless cross-Channel acquisitions in both directions. Even our defence industries are co-operating: there has been talk of building naval ships together, which would surely be the biggest turnaround in the history of warfare at sea.